Digital Libraries In Medicine

The rapid rate of change of medical knowledge, as well as the need for maintained certification, make continuing medical education a requirement for all physicians. The changes in health care management place increased decision-making in the hands of primary care physicians, with correspondingly increased need for current medical information. With these information and learning needs in mind, we have designed and implemented SHINE, Stanford Health Information Network for Education, a digital library and learning resource for primary care physicians. The architecture of the system assumes a federation of knowledge bases, a single Web-based query interface, middleware to translate between the query and the knowledge bases, and auxiliary services such as a thesaurus, a log and a notebook. The system has been deployed for use by physicians and medical students. The system architecture, design choices and initial results of evaluation will be presented.